


Sayaka and Homura in the Homura-verse, pt. 3: Overlooked Details

by TaraSamadhi



Series: Love and Adventure in the Homura-verse [7]
Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Comedy, Deity Sex Consequences, Dubious Science, F/F, Frenemies, Friendship/Love, Interplanetary Travel, Mild Language, Monsters, Satire, Yuri
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:16:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaraSamadhi/pseuds/TaraSamadhi
Summary: A short period has passed since Akemi Homura and Kaname Madoka released their long pent-up mutual sexual desire and unleashed a near-catastrophic aphrodisiac storm in the world, leaving some lasting effects in the lives of their friends. This all began as a prank by Miki Sayaka on Homura and Madoka, rendering her somewhat responsible.Sayaka, the narrator, has a deeply alarming conversation with Homura in which Homura admits that the gravitational field in which they live is fraying and on the verge of letting in absolute chaos. Homura enlists Sayaka's aid in diagnosing the energy bleedings going on in the "visualization boundary", which results in misfortune for Sayaka and a transition to the next part of this rapidly expanding epic of two women condemned by fate to troll each other.This story contains a startling change in Madoka's personality. She has learned to issue terrifying ultimatums. No more Miss Nice Goddess.





	1. Chapter 1

Akemi Homura and I have become friends, under a certain definition of friendship. We prank each other without mercy. Not even a large part of any particular day goes by without one of us, or both of us, falling victim to a sucker punch practical joke sent from the smiling other. It’s not a surprise. We tried to kill each other, or seriously considered it, several times in the past, but we’re getting older and mellowing out a bit. 

This all started when I got Homura and Madoka drunk to see what would happen and almost brought on universal annihilation when they decided to ascend to their higher forms and get it on. I personally witnessed the terrifying spectacle of angelic deities having sex. The world is still not the same. A titanic spike in pregnancies occurred during the five months when they were at it, hidden as best they could but generating massive diffusions of sexual power, and a lot of happy couples have been walking around since then. The aphrodisiac side-effects on reality itself were astonishing, and we could only hope that nothing bad happened. But it seemed only lovers of various sorts amplified the gigantic sexual explosion that rocked the world at that time.

Kyouko and I enjoyed it. She stayed at home with me too much and lost her job. I started fantasizing about adopting a child and wearing an apron all the time with my hair pinned up, long skirt raking the floor.

Finally, things began to settle down. Japan’s birth rate problem has been solved, replaced with an oncoming population explosion. Work days are shortening because people are screwing at work, sometimes in plain sight. This is what I mean by settling down.

At last, it was time for Homura and Madoka to meet with the trusting friends who suffered grievous harm because of their lust. Mami was pregnant and Kyousuke had taken on a second job to provide for the upcoming octuplets. Hitomi, now 16, and her bus driver girlfriend had adopted two refugee orphans. Nagise provided proof that the age of consent should be way higher than the one consenting would ever want it to be, since her erstwhile proper and restrained boyfriend was now in the hospital with unspecified damage to his genitals. Kyouko and I had restrained ourselves along those lines, except for the bunnies we were raising for no good reason in the back yard. This was not normal; it was not okay. Homura and Madoka had to account for themselves and exhibit deep remorse.

Mami, Kyouko, Nagise, and I sat in the living room in dark silence and stared at Madoka and Homura as they slunk into the room. They were in the form of middle school students again, but they were fooling no one. Some mysterious magnetic force had seemingly glued them together at the hip and their eyes looked like blank coins. Passion had removed every trace of baby fat from their bodies and their pores were emitting strangely hued smoke. An unsettling miasma let everyone know that they were still having sex at every opportunity. They did look ashamed, though. There was that.

The rest of us waited until they sat down, and then we attacked singly and in force.

Madoka and Homura silently endured massive, unceasing verbal abuse from their friends for forty-eight hours, with meal and bathroom breaks. The only thing we failed to do was put them under interrogation klieg lamps, but we thought about it. Madoka and Homura sat together, holding hands, just taking it. How could they excuse themselves for a months-long, galaxy-spanning bout of raw quantum-level sex? How could they even admit it, even though everyone knew it?

The only violence occurred when Madoka answered us by saying, “Well at least Homura and I are happy.” The extremely pregnant Mami leapt up in rage and Madoka fled to the bedroom and locked the door until everyone calmed down.

Finally kiss- and make-up time came, and we all started planning our collective future like alienated spouses deciding to give it another try. Of course, at heart we are girls, so there was a lot of hugging and crying and confessing and comforting going on. 

The only ones not participating in this were Homura and me, who sat on the tatami mat-sized deck behind the house. Homura and I did not have a history of expressing mutual affection.

I stared at her. “So what’s the damage?”

“Oh look,” she said, “bunnies.”

That did not amuse me. “This demon-spawned universe,” I said. “What damage did it take?”

Homura would not meet my eyes, a bad sign. “I’m not sure. There has been some, though. There are wrinkles.”

“The universe is prematurely aging?”

Homura looked at me to see if I was serious, and I grinned at her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Out on the edge of this planet’s gravitational field,” she said, “is what I suppose you could call a visualization boundary, where things cease or begin to make some kind of sense. Beyond that is just time/space flux. The boundary is getting a little porous, so there is leakage from both sides and parts of the boundary are a little gelatinous. I should have done something about it before, but I’ve been busy lately.”

I let that one slide.

“So,” Homura said, “I was going to ask for your help. There’s some low-risk, low-skill, low-intelligence work that needs to be done, so you were the first person to come to mind.”

I let that one slide, too.

Homura was becoming visibly annoyed at not being able to piss me off. “Anyway, I could use some help mending it.”

I let that one slide, but not because I was trolling her. That did not sound good at all.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You created this circus and you need help mending an elemental part of it.”

“Well,” Homura said carefully, “It’s more like maintenance.”

This sounded very bad, and she didn’t look too happy about it, either.

“Okay,” I said slowly, “tell me that what I’m hearing is not what you’re saying. You seem to be saying that we are literally living in a bubble surrounded by absolute chaos. You also seem to be saying that the surface tension of the bubble is breaking up under the weight of the chaos, rather than the chaos being reduced or permanently held at bay. In addition, I hear you saying that you, the bitch demon queen of this universe, need assistance with maintaining your creation. And finally, that logically speaking, what you did was not really rewrite the book of the universe, but mainly threw away the pages you didn’t like and kept the ones you did, and replaced the ones you threw away with blank ones.”

Homura looked a bit peaked. “Well, I suppose you could see it that way.”

“And all this clit-clashing you’ve been doing with Madoka… You don’t know how that might have affected anything. Especially since you created all this when you were lonely and resigned to not having Madoka. None of this was meant to bear the weight of positivity.”

She didn’t say anything.

“And,” I said, “you want me to do this so you don’t have to give Madoka her powers back to help you.”

Late afternoon was coming and going with light showers of rain and birds singing up and down the block. Homura and I stared at things in physical peace and mental turmoil. I’m not sure she meant to tell me as much as she did, but she had, and I couldn’t unhear it.

“I’m sure I’ll get around to that,” Homura said.

“Because the sex is so good?” I asked.

“Well… I can’t deny that’s part of it.”

*

We set out that afternoon to get the job done. Homura gave me a power of flight, which was exceptionally fun once I stopped flying upside down, and she was decked out in her full demon dominatrix porn regalia, wings and exposed hips and everything. Every now and then she’d stop and wait for me, striking conscious poses.

“Stop voguing,” I told her.

“It’s a way I entertain myself,” she said.

“Try masturbating,” I said, “or pottery making. Or doing both at the same time.”

Homura smiled and didn’t respond, which was infinitely more annoying that anything she could have said. We advanced rapidly to an oblong disk-shaped field glimmering and shimmering along an unfounded crystalline curvature. I didn’t like that at all. Too much of what was out there was way too close to what was in here.

“I seriously think you’re plotting to kill me,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, “in the most ghoulish possible way. No, you still have a lot of healing magic that you have somehow carried this far. I wanted you to get a diagnostic sense of how badly the bleed-in and bleed-out of alternate energy states is happening.”

“Hands-on.”

“No, just get a sense of it. Seriously.”

I carefully approached the threadbare boundary, trying to look ahead because Homura was ceaselessly trolling me by voguing. 

I was worried. In a very short period of time, Homura had started having world-altering sex with my not-so-bright goddess best friend Madoka, and now there was a worn-out place in a boundary I had just found out was our only buffer from absolute chaos, and on top of that, the diabolical bitch responsible was voguing.

It happened pretty fast, so I still can’t fault Homura’s response time.

Whatever it was outside the boundary imploded outward and sucked me through the hole.

I fought my way back as best I could as Homura yelled, “Wait!”

WAIT?

A chute opened up in the flux and down I went, falling toward whatever aspects of the universe Homura had not meant to mess with.

More terrifying than this actual horror was a last-minute realization that I was falling into a hole in Homura’s holographically projected soul, which she had cast into the void out of her infinite sorrow.

 

End of Chapter One


	2. Chapter 2

UNKNOWN ANNOUNCER:

We interrupt ongoing broadcasts from currently disabled Channel Sayaka to publish a transcribed conversation between Akemi Homura, Universal Demon Bitch Queen, and Kaname Madoka, partially deposed Goddess of Magic Girl Hope and Happiness.

The possibly nonexistent universal public must have access to this transcript, due to the nonverifiable possibility that they are merely elements of the Demon Bitch Queen’s paranoiac realm as mapped into Possibly Consensual Reality.

Stakes are high for these two major players. Months of continual Lesbian Deity Sex have left both of them with dangerous levels of afterglow endangering the ambiguous stability of the universe and the demonstrable happiness of their closest friends. 

Miki Sayaka, the magical girl who caused the situation due to a prank gone wrong, has been sucked into a paradimensional well and blasted into apparent absolute chaos while performing a differential energy boundary maintenance task for UDBQ Homura, her sworn frenemy.

(Ambiguously evident use of this transcript is strictly forbidden under the Specious Transparency precedent. Mention of it requires approval under all cosmic fair use statutes. Demon and Goddess have stipulated that no one publish imagery or other expressions of their recent intimate activities.)

*

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

KM: Homura-chan, we have to talk.

AH: But I don’t want to.

KM: I know, dear one, but Sayaka’s predicament concerns everyone. I had to keep Kyouko from coming with me because she wants to strangle you. I love you very much, but the time for transparency is here. Did you intentionally get rid of Sayaka?

AH (covering face with hands): Of course not, Madoka. Why would I dispose of that presumptious, obnoxious twat?

KM: That could be taken as a confession.

AH: No! No one except Sayaka will challenge and ridicule me. Do you know how hard I’ve worked to establish at least one adversarial relationship since exterminating the Kyubeys? I’d never eliminate Sayaka. I’d never get rid of your oldest best friend, I love you too much for that. It doesn’t matter that she is a two-faced, devious, insulting bitch. That’s not something I would do. I… I… I…don’t know exactly what is actually completely going on in this universe I definitely created.

KM: Homura-chan, please stop hedging. Haven’t I been honest with you?

AH (on the verge of tears): Madoka, I’ve never lied to you. Well, aside from not telling you the complete truth sometimes. We’re close now, you know my heart, I’m sorry for this, I’m not sure what to do. I asked her to help and she helped. She got swallowed up by my idiocy. I’m really sorry. I don’t know what to do.

(Moment of silence)

KM: You know what you have to do, to set this right.

(Silence)

AH: But Madoka…

KM: There is no alternative. You have to trust me. You can’t fix this alone.

(REDACTION)

AH: Madoka…

KM: Why would I have become your lover if you couldn’t trust me? You know my heart.

(REDACTION)

AH: But…

(REDACTION)

KM: You…

(REDACTION. END TRANSCRIPT.)

*

ELLIPTICAL LIGHT TRANSMISSION FROM UNKN0WN SENDER TO UDBQ AKEMI HOMURA AND AND GMGHH KANAME MADOKA. MINIMUM PACKET LOSS AT ENTROPY LAG LEVEL 780B#72:

Start. This is an anonymous ally sympathetic to your ongoing efforts to improve the effective states of all species precursors, species, individuals, and civilizations, especially GMGHH Kaname Madoka. Information about your ally Miki Sayaka may be found in the parametric galactic time fold quadrant 873 in the general proximity of what your species calls the Crab Nebula. Species involved has no self-authorized name but is widely known as the Breachers. Adversaries composed of falsely organized energy, known to both of you, have been spotted on your home planet, where Miki Sayaka has almost certainly landed alive and disgruntled due to the machinations of the Breachers. Maximal force intervention suggested in dealing with Breachers. Adversarial rhetoric skills required. Compassion not a factor. Breacher designs considered rational according to their own logic, inscrutable to the logical extrapolations of all other species. Good luck to both of you; the prayers of many civilizations travel with you. Stop.

*

The Breachers knew who was inexorably advancing, scorning their defences, through their territory and into communicative range. They were profoundly unhappy about the incursion. They feared the being encroaching on their home planet, on whom they had waged war without warning to the frantic warnings of the Kyubey civilization shortly before its violent extinction.

The goddess Madoka materialized directly inside the habitat perimeter, long pink hair floating around her like a winking cloud of stars, eyes dazzling with implacable purpose, clothing deceptively ornamental but manifesting weaponry superior to every defensive resource of the Breachers. The goddess radiated an aura that abolished every trace of shadow established by the darkness-requiring Breachers, accompanied with incessant waves of color states and explosive charges of transforming energy. Roaring choruses of angelic music swept through the atmosphere and punished the Breachers’ inherently muffled hearing.

This was bad.

Madoka floated to the area of the Breachers’ planet where their representatives had nervously gathered.

Madoka stared at them. “I shall destroy you and I shall make it hurt for a very long time beforehand, unless you account for yourself and reverse the harm you are doing.”

The Breacher spokesman replied, “We are fully cognizant of your retributive powers and have no desire to engage with warfare with you or your allies. But perhaps as we discuss our issues we can defer existential threats as topics, in order best to understand and solve shared quandaries and challenges.”

Madoka narrowed her eyes. “Good. You are frightened. As we speak, know that I have rejoined forces with Universal Demon Queen Akemi Homura, who has restored my powers after seizing them during a dispute. This means we can destroy you three times, two by us individually and another by the two of us joined. The third option is the worst for you and is the one we are currently considering. I know enough to understand that you have transgressed the peace of other species and harmed them without warning and explanation. In order to speak peacefully, I need you to account for what you have done to humanity, how you have done it, and how you will keep from doing it again.”

The Breacher statesman paused. He had no desire to irritate his peers by disclosing too much, but he also wanted to avoid immeasurable torment and destruction at the hands of two angry deities.

“Two instances. First, we discovered a sentient anomaly actively rewriting entire sectors of the known universe, shortly after you did the same. The entity doing the rewriting was easily identified to be a remorseless, grudge-holding, potentially vicious life form whose only vulnerability was an operating complex of profound neuroses based in resentment, bereavement, anger, and yearning. These traits are approximations of things we understand about human beings. Before she did the rewriting, we established hostile forces that she was forced to engage as she wore down with exhaustion and despair. The nature of these forces was a topical holographic materialization process occupying the topos of her existential responsive mechanism.”

Madoka’s face shone with tears. “The wraiths.”

“That is what you called them. Miki Sayaka guided Demon Queen Akemi Homura to destroying the wraiths, which were simply effective projections of…of…the grief and rage she…held toward you for…making her…murder you and leave…her alone to thwart the apathetic but malignant emissaries of the Kyubey civilization.”

Tears were blinding Madoka, but she could not change her expression during this negotiation.

“The current problem, one which required Miki Sayaka, your lieutenant but one flawed by impetuous bravery, is happening on your home planet of Earth in the first half of what they know as the 21st century. We have accidentally aroused a group of truly terrible creatures, monsters really, by issuing a stray holographic command meant to disable a species made up of pernicious insects.”

“You are the pernicious insects,” Madoka said. “I cannot express how much I want to kill you.”

“We understand that, but are praying that you not do such a thing in exchange for full disclosure and cooperation in mending our mistake. Miki Sayaka is the human we sent to destroy these monsters. We feel that, due to her strange combined qualities of situational intelligence, kindness, courage, obstinance, and titanic strength, she can perform the task. Frankly, we used her to bait you into assisting us.”

Homura suddenly appeared beside Madoka, radiating a rippling purple aura, black raven’s wings fully spanned, eyes blazing like obsidian, hatred raging in her eyes.

The spokesman stopped, paralyzed with terror, collected himself, and spoke again. “We will provide you with the topos of conflict and leave it up to you as to how and when we intervene. If you decide to do it and to allow Miki Sayaka to perform as chief warrior, we will swear fealty to you and accept both your leadership.

“But please do not destroy us. You must, we plead for you to understand that we try, not always successfully, to limit aggressive life forms within sixty billion light years of our planet.”

“Where,” Homura said, withering and altering every molecule of the Breacher world and causing huge earthquakes across its mantle, “where and when can we find Sayaka? Tell us now. I have never been truly angry before, but believe me, I am angry now.”

The spokesman paused. “The location is what is currently known to humanity as the United States. You may not be able to find her for a while; we have put up a massive time/space deflection screen around Earth. The precise topos is a tiny patch of desert surface known as western Arizona.”


	3. Chapter 3

THIRD PERSON

If someone wanted to stand in blinding glare and 105 degree F. heat, not completely registering the temperature due to zero humidity before they dropped dead, in western Arizona just east of Kingman, on the shoulder of State Highway 66, that person might see a figure approaching, a petite and pretty blue-haired Japanese woman with an extremely annoyed facial expression and an air of toughness that did not square with her size. The cotton sweater that nearly suffocated her when she dropped out of the sky and made a weirdly gentle landing on the hardpan was now tied around her head to block the sun. Her tee shirt sleeves were rolled up past the shoulders and she had loosened her jeans as best she could without walking naked.

The person watching her might want to leave before being sighted, because Miki Sayaka was red-eyed and ready to rumble. Distracted and fighting valiantly to calm down, she saw a roadside billboard come into view, evidently old as ragged sheets of it hung tragically toward the ground. She vaguely understood the message font and imagery to be similar to old western movies she somehow watched when she was young.

When she got close to the sign, she saw the message: “The Whole World Loves Arizona.”

Sayaka scratched the back of her neck and spoke to herself. “I don’t know anything about Arizona, but I doubt the whole world loves it.”

She had already figured out that it was Earth of some time near her original one. Homura, she said, when you come to rescue me I am going to kick your butt.

The long freefall through absolute chaos had been quite an experience. What seemed to be giant configurations of ambiguously hued cumulus clouds alternated with weird apparitions of tsunamis sweeping across landscapes made of chopsticks, and weirder ghosts of cities and inexplicable structures crossing back and forth and between. She got used to seeing familiar faces appear and disappear, from people she and Homura both knew. And through it all, Sayaka was buffeted by vast howling cyclones of longing and desire for love ripped out of Homura’s heart and hurled into the deep.

Homura, Sayaka thought as she resumed walking down the old highway in the fierce and blinding heat, why didn’t you let people know? Why didn’t you let us know what was in your heart? Even I, who was jealous of you and didn’t trust you and moronically stood in your way as you tried to warn and save us, couldn’t have resisted it. I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.

But I’m still going to give you endless shit as often as I can.

*

Madoka and Homura descended to the quiet white sand shores of a vast, calm, mirror-like lake. Keeping their higher forms, they held hands and wandered along its edge. Homura looked unhappy and wouldn’t look Madoka in the eyes.

“Homura-chan,” Madoka said, “what is wrong?”

“Nothing, really.”

Madoka suddenly turned, threw Homura face down, straddled her, and hammerlocked one of her arms. “No more of that! What’s bothering you?”

“Gah!” Homura yelled. “That hurts!”

Madoka shoved Homura’s arm a little bit further upwards.

“Damn it!” Homura yelled.

“Let’s hear it,” Madoka said, releasing Homura’s arm and lying face downward on her, embracing her bare shoulders and enjoying the sensation of the giant, furled raven wings. She rubbed her cheek against the silky nape of Homura’s neck and Homura lost all resistance. Homura got up as Madoka climbed off of her and knelt before her. Homura knelt in front of Madoka.

“What are we going to do?” Homura asked softly, her wings drooping.

“What do you mean, Beloved?” Madoka asked.

“I mean, your powers are back, and I might be in my labyrinth for good. I don’t think I rewrote the universe as I thought. It’s more like I created a better version of my own prison.”

Madoka shook her head. “I will never leave you again. Never. You have me now. Even if you want to get rid of me, you have me. Wherever you are will be where I belong, and if I have to go, I will return. You are my wife. I am yours.”

“But…”

“I know I forgot you many times, so many times, and I abandoned you too. But that’s over. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Madoka put a finger under Homura’s chin and tipped her face up. “I will never leave you. Forever, I am yours. Say it to me.”

“Forever, you are mine.”

“Just keep that in your mind and don’t let it out. ‘Madoka is mine. She is free and a goddess again, but I have captured her heart and she is my wife and she will never leave.’ Say it.”

“‘Madoka is mine. She is free and a goddess again, but I have captured her heart and she is my wife and she will never leave.’”

“Keep turning that over in your mind,” Madoka said, “and don’t stop.”

“Why are you so kind to me after what I have done to you?”

“Because I made you flee from me, hold back from me, rather than come to me, for so long. It was my fault. It was all my fault. From the moment I made you kill me, through your cycling through all those terrible times, through the moment you locked us in your labyrinth, all of that was my fault. How can I be forgiven for forgetting you even once, you, my love, my Beloved, the name of my heart? Now I want to make it up to you. Forever.”

Madoka leaned over and kissed Homura full on the lips. Homura leaned in and they explored each other’s mouths for a long time. Then they fell away.

*

FIRST PERSON

I finally arrived at a tiny community, Duval, situated just short of the freeway that had replaced and bypassed the highway remnant I had walked. The sign I read on the way had reassured me about being able to talk with people. Truth be told, the Law of Cycles is a boring place to live. I spent my time learning a lot of languages and mastering a lot of martial arts, when I wasn’t realizing how much Kyouko had really loved me and how much I could have loved her back and feeling my heart ache over that. So the languages here would almost certainly be familiar, I thought.

The community was made up of an old gas station, a “curio” shop, and a burrito restaurant/stand attached to the shop. That was it, except for a few scattered houses and prefabricated structures out on the baked white hardpan flat.

A husband and wife ran the shop and the burrito stand, in the latter of which I saw them through the window on approach. The only other person visible or present anywhere seemed to be some kind of handyman who waved as I walked up.

The married couple spoke a language called Spanish when alone, having lived in Central America before migrating up continent. The things I had read and watched and listened to made sense of that. They spoke English as well. English was probably all I would need to know to talk with people there. Their names were Ignacio and Consuela Villareal. I told them my name and told them I was Japanese. They said they were mestizo, to a certain extent, so just think of them as Mexican. I did.

They fed me and gave me a lot to drink and asked whether I would like to work at their place for a while. Apparently, the Villareals knew a wanderer when they saw one.

There didn’t seem to be a rescue coming in the immediate future and I didn’t want to turn into a leather and hair remnant gnawed to the bone by vultures on the side of the road, so I told them I was just wandering around in life and asked whether I could work there for food and drink and maybe a place to sleep. They agreed immediately. When I suddenly thought to look in the mirror, I didn’t look either middle school age or late twenties as I did in Homura’s little pocket of strangeness. I looked probably nineteen, too young to be wandering about in a daze and too old to be taken in by child protection services. The Villareals cared about me and I liked them. So I stayed there and worked.

I mainly cooked and generally operated the little burrito stand and tiny patio attached to it. The place got awful business due to the fact that no one knew it was there. However, I’m a good cook and made people happy to buy what we sold them. I also did things like restocking the curio shop, which was a very strange place. It had all kinds of items displayed with strange claims, like an obsidian scrying mirror and a desert scorpion suspended in some kind of soft amber-like substance that was supposed to help people summon the dead. No way was I touching that again. There were also peculiarities like black velvet religious wall hangings and stuffed animal heads that were sometimes jokes like “jackelopes”, a joke that got old fast.

Sometimes, working the stand and dreaming for hours of inactivity, occasionally scanning the distance for evidence of my pink boss and the demon gothic bitch I seemed to be stuck with for life, I thought of love. Kyouko had been the second love for me, of course, and there wouldn’t be another. But sometimes, thinking of my love of women with Kyouko, I became puzzled that I had also loved Kyouske, his flesh and the vibrations of his voice and the imagined touch of his fingers as well as the music that drilled to my core and made it dance. So I could love men, love their flesh and warmth, as well. It was deeply puzzling. If Hitomi had missed her chance and Kyubey hadn’t talked me into being the Undead, I would probably have been with Kyouske and slept with him and maybe even married and had children with him. That would have been fine. But I desired Kyouko more than I could handle sometimes. So it was all very puzzling.

In the Law of Cycles I sometimes thought of the places where people love each other, in each other, as “gates”. The gates of the heart, the gates of the mind, whatever. But then, as I grew belatedly to love Kyouko from an unbridgeable distance, I started thinking more seriously about it. The gates of love, the gates of the flesh, the gates of hope, the gates of fear. This helped me to imagine things. For gates are the permitted passage places located in fences and walls. Pass through gates and you are at least acknowledged as having taken the correct route, even though they are not always open or welcoming.

Do the gates of flesh open before the gates of love? Do the gates of love open before the gates of the flesh? Do they even lead one to another? Maybe not. In fact, having loved Kyouske, I knew they might not prove to be that way. But I still wondered about how I had wandered into the spirit perimeters of Kyousuke and Kyouko. And why are their names so similar?

I decided that with both of them, the gates of love had opened to the gates of the flesh. I desired them, craved them, after having learned to love them. But loving Kyouske was to love something that was both him and not him, both his voice and someone else’s voice, his music. Loving Kyouko was different. The voice that emerged when the gates of love opened, her voice, was direct and pure. It made very certain what was being said and why, and it welcomed me. So I answered it and entered the gates of her flesh, and she welcomed me there, and I welcomed her into mine.

I was lucky, I thought. I have loved. I have tasted and swum the waters of love, over and over again. No matter what happened, even falling through some kind of dimensional rift through a lunatic’s lonely neuroses, I could claim victory there.

It made me sad, but I was certain that as I got older, I would allow fewer and fewer people through any gate within me. It seemed inevitable for some reason, perhaps because I knew it would become very hard to meet the requirements and expectations of love as I, and the people I met, carried heavier and heaver burdens. But until then, I would love and be beloved.

But I needed to sell some burritos so the Villareals could continue living. I walked out the door of the stand and knelt in the dirt, pondering what magic I had left in me. It was the kind of thing where I really didn’t know, where I wouldn’t find out unless I tried. So I looked in all directions to make sure no one was looking, squinted, identified the branchings of collective force, and just for fun started making little hand motions to jerk on the branches and tug people toward the stand. Maybe I could get some business that way. After a while doing that foolish thing, laughing at myself, I locked the stand and wandered into the shop to look around.

At which point something scared the hell out of me.

“Sayaka-chan! Sayaka-chan! Can you hear me, Sayaka-chan?”

I whipped around, looking for my childhood friend and eternal boss Madoka. She wasn’t there.

“Sayaka-chan! Can you hear me? Can you see me?”

“No!” I roared at no one. “No, I can’t! Where are you, you silly person?”

“Oh thank God,” she said. “I can hear you. Are you okay?”

“Yes, Madoka,” I said, “but where are you? You scared me to death.”

“I’m sorry. I just have your coordinates and can only communicate a little. Is there anything made of glass, there? You might be able to see me.”

I looked around. No one was there. I’d try the scrying mirror. Sure enough, through the dark obsidian filter, was my best friend, dressed once again in celestial pink regalia and big pink hair, beautiful and loving and big-eyed and goofy.

“So Homura gave in at last,” I said. “It must have been the sex.”

“Yeah, I gave in,” said a sheepish voice outside the frame.

“Homura, I have some issues to discuss with you.”

Homura mumbled across the unknown distances, “I’m really sorry.”

That stumped me. I expected her dark, intellectual sarcasm. “Well,” I said, “thanks for apologizing. But I’m really mad.”

“I know,” she said, clearly literally hiding behind Madoka. “I know. We’ll talk when you get back. I’ll buy you a ticket for a pony ride, or something.”

I rolled my eyes, but didn’t satisfy her with a reply.

“Dear one,” Madoka said in grandmother mode, “we have this brief homing signal and I think it’s going to die out soon. But we’ll get there as soon as you can. And if you…monsters…don’t…”

“Monsters!” I said. “What about monsters?”

“Don’t fight…get there. Okay?”

“Wait.”

There was an audible crashing, buzzing sound, and the connection was cut. Monsters. Just what I needed. Monsters?

Suddenly, the air filled with the sounds of cars driving into the gravel lot outside the shop. Lots of cars and trucks and motorcycles, to be more specific. People were getting out and lining up at the burrito stand. Oh God, I thought. My stupid magic. It really brought customers.

The inventory was barely sufficient for the cooking and serving and cashiering that went on until four in the morning. I almost threw burritos out the serving window as I prepared more. Almost not enough beans, get some more beans. Low on meat, zap it or stew it. Chop the peppers. Ouch. Cheese, handfuls. Cashier. Wash hands. Beer, too, bottles and bottles of it, and Mexican mineral water as well. 

Over three hundred burritos served by four in the morning. Where were the Villareals?

Never again would I play with untried magic.

But I would play with tried magic.

I fell asleep on the stand steps and woke at dawn as ICE, the American anti-immigrant government thugs I had read about, arrived in trucks to get the Villareals. Ten heavily armed people apprehending two unarmed people who were, I knew for a fact, American citizens. That angered me.

I gave them time to get out of their trucks before I gave myself a migraine expending the magic I inexplicably carried around.

“Hey!” I called to them. “Turn around, look behind you!”

Octavia was roaring above them, her holographic sword swinging at them.

They were as terrified as their victims, running around and eventually making it to their trucks. I was hurting from creating my witch avatar, but couldn’t stop now. As the trucks drove off with squealing tires, Octavia pursued them. During the day I spent afterward, the bastards didn’t come back.

Cowardly pieces of shit.

*

SECOND PERSON

Child, I’m glad you came here to live with us and help us. You have no way of knowing how you have blessed us, who have barely been able to live here.

You haven’t seen me. I am one of those persons who are present but never seen, a minor functionary of the Council Between Worlds. I have called in my colleagues, but there is no way of knowing whether they can help. My job is to protect you, as long as I can, from the vicious half-alive beings who move invisibly through the desert night.

But there’s nothing I can do to protect you from Those Who Bring the End of Days.

From the shamanic oral traditions to the ghoulish entertainments of Lovecraft I studied in my years of college, the emergence of these monsters has been predicted. And in the most convincing shamanic tradition, there has been talk that a young woman will intercept and fight these beings.

It is you, no doubt about it. You, a lovely Japanese girl, lively and stubborn and strong. Somewhere, in the intersections of normal and abnormal reality, word passed down that you would be here to fight.

Not win. Fight.

I will not leave your side, although you will never see me.

But no one else, at least in the beginning, will be at your side to fight with you, and I am not capable of fighting to the death the eldritch monsters who are coming.

Blessings to you, child. 

Let us grow strong and wait.


	4. Chapter 4

Kyouko wandered around the house where she and Sayaka lived, heart aching and pounding with worry. Her wife had disappeared who knew where, and even though she knew that if Homura and Madoka couldn’t retrieve her no one could, fear harrowed her. To lose Sayaka would life ending, even the thought of it was almost too much to bear.

Come back please, Kyouko prayed, her wife’s image clear before her as she closed her eyes. Please. Tears spilled through closed lids and ran down her face.

The strong, bright, intelligent woman hunched forward in impossible pain. My love, I can’t live if you leave. Please, my love, come back.

*

COMMUNIQUE

 

TO: DAVID SORMAN, SPECIES NEGOTIATOR CLASS II

FROM: COUNCIL BETWEEN WORLDS

REGARDING: EMERGENCE OF ELDRITCH ABOMINATIONS ON EARTH

CONSIDERATION: YOUR REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE IN ELIMINATNG SAID ABOMINATIONS

 

Dear David,

The Council has taken your request into consideration and undertaken extensive background research on the phenomenon you describe. It has discovered that the awakening of the Arizona abominations resulted from a stray disintegration pulse intended to annihilate an aggressive insectoid species a galaxy away. The pulse was issued by Species 799079079%%% of what some Earth dwellers call the Crab Nebula.

Rather than being destroyed, the abominations absorbed the pulse while in their latency crypts and took it as a command from their leaders to arise and attack. Ironically, their leaders, horrific primordial beings who helped shape the early universe, have all wandered off into uncharted realms while their minions have belatedly and accidentally received a cue to wreak havoc on the life forms of Earth.

The abominations cannot be tolerated. If they evolve, they inevitably would inflict far greater harm than any species may acceptably inflict. This calls for Priority 1-A, pursuant to directive G68(] of our current policy formulation. The Sufficient Force doctrine applies. In this case, our assault will include antimatter cannons of indeterminate impact parameters.

While we sympathize with your high and continuing allegiance to the humanity that gave you birth and nurtured and educated you up to the point of sublation into our realm, we cannot be overly concerned about collateral effects on humanity when we scourge the abominations.

The anomalous human you have described, who will fight the abominations in the first onslaught, deserves our thanks and respect, since she will undoubtedly be vaporized in our primary assault on the enemy.

Other external factors include two anomalous quasi-human entities, enormously powerful and commanding countless inexplicable physical transforms, who are currently moving toward Earth on a vector to precede our operations, probably to assist or rescue the anomalous human of whom you are so fond. They are what some species, including humanity, deem “deities.” Both have demonstrably actually changed the nature of space/time and matter and energy on two alarming and definitive occasions, but without malice or excessive disruption.

All things considered, we support the human anomalies and wish them all the best in their remote possibilities of survival.

Humanity in general, after our onslaught, may barely exist in its wake. For this, we offer our regrets in advance and our respects to your problematical but resourceful species.

Thank you for your good work, David.

Please let us know whether you need an escape module for departure from Earth, prior to the attack. We will be more than happy to assist an esteemed colleague such as yourself in resettling and starting a new life.

Yours in convergence,

Jou-Ar Mysostik, Entanglement Committee Chair, Council Between Worlds

*

Invisible to the naked eye in his sublate state, David Sorman finished a half-mile walk in the scorching sun and raised the half-buried door of a hidden chamber in the earth. He walked down the stairs and prepared himself.

It was always a possibility, he said to himself. You took the chance knowing that it was a possibility that they would be willing to kill everyone. But it’s not impossible that things will work out. The first consideration is getting rid of the abominations. The Old Ones really did a number on evolved life when they came up with these things. But the Old Ones never thought. They sensed and acted in their heinous fashion and now appear to have moved on to terrify pristine regions of the universe. 

This just might work, David thought. His drone had repeatedly circled Sayaka all morning, gathering holographic information and compiling it into a very high definition of her image. He had taken the imaging device out of the drone and would now simply shoot Sayaka’s image out into space on the local transmitter the Council gave him for local communication within his solar system.

He loaded Sayaka’s image into the transmitter, aimed it as best he could, and sent it with the message he had composed for her assistance.

Hopefully your friends will receive this, child, he thought. You have clearly been waiting. I suspect that whomever you await will come.

*

Madoka and Homura simultaneously received the broadcast of Sayaka’s image and an accompanying message explaining her situation and giving exact coordinates for them to find her.

*

The Breachers, in the process of lowering the deflection barrier around Earth they had set up as a containment field for the abominations, had their job completed for them when the Council Between Worlds, having regretfully agreed on an intervention plan, bombarded the Breachers’ planet with antimatter, causing a cataclysmic explosion that vaporized everything, including the unfortunate species’ starship fleet. The Council had put up with countless interferences and disruptions from the Breachers over millenia. Now, with a heavy and compassionate heart, the Council decided to annihilate them, and it was done. Coincidentally, with this action, the network of machines sustaining the deflection barrier around Earth was destroyed and the blue planet was once again open to space.

*

Sayaka was thinking about the monsters. Dusk was settling on the desert, throwing stark shadows and painting everything orange and dried-blood red. Half-frightened and half-excited, she registered the movements of the monsters in their crypts as they prepared to rise, their movements vibrating in her breastbone. Is this it? Sayaka wondered. Is this where I meet my final death? If so, what about it?

Sayaka closed her eyes and thought about it. I myself have been a monster, a giant bundle of agonized vicious sadness, more than once. I understand monsters. I have fought them and known them. Perhaps this is best. 

At least I’ll enjoy myself.

She knew intuitively that the abominations would rise from the Earth exactly as the sun finished its descent, just past the gloaming. This way, their eyes would not hurt from the light and they would be able to find anything through heat signatures and smell. 

A cool breeze traced her face as the temperature dropped and the sun fell below the horizon, leaving the sky polarized in shades of blue.

*

Madoka and Homura descended, relieved that the Breacher deflection shield was down. It might have wasted precious seconds to get through. Their forms floated strangely, half-visibly, through the darkening sky, slowly, like dandelion seeds.

Both of them saw the ground stirring, bubbling and heaving a short distance away, in maybe a hundred places in the open desert. Some terrible subsurface energy registered a bile-green hue for both of them as their keen eyes evaluated where the enemy was about to emerge.

No more than two minutes remained before the abominations crashed upward through the surface.

“Homura-chan,” Madoka said, “this is where we find out how many of your and my powers obtain. I haven’t used mine for a while, and some of yours may not work if we are outside the field of your universe. We can’t be discouraged if our normal powers fail us. We have to believe in everyone fighting with us and we have to trust ourselves.”

Homura smiled and nodded. “We can do it.”

Their feet were about to touch ground when, between them and the emerging monsters, a blazing line of light erupted at ground level for about two hundred yards and stayed, with alternating powerful steady white lights and small, surging orange lights.

Then, to their utter delight, a smiling blue haired figure burst into view above the ground, dancing in blue light that swirled and scattered like water, in a familiar caped outfit and holding a blindingly bright sword, transforming into a knight for all that is good and just and true. She looked impossibly happy.

*

I decided to transform, if I could. It’s fun, cape and all. And I had a feeling I could summon my sword, maybe if I held something that could turn into one with a little push. First, though, I had to repel those monsters, at least for a moment. For that, short of floodlights, I at least needed highway flares.

“I need flares,” I said out loud, and gave myself a couple of comical minutes to find some.

I had walked maybe twenty yards when I came on a large, heavy nylon bag filled with cylinders. A hand-written sign, pinned to the front of the bag, said “Flares and how to use them.”

Huh.

“I need a line of trucks or a row of floodlights stretched for as far as possible between here and where the monsters are emerging. When they break surface, all the lamps need to come on.”

It was too much to hope for and I assumed I was dreaming anyway, so I dragged the bag of flares toward an optimal point for forming the line. Arrayed before me were big trucks and floodlights, lined up.

This was too much to believe, but I wasn’t about to turn it down.

I walked to the line of trucks and standing lights and placed flares between each of them. The instruction sheet someone had attached to the front of the bag was very clear. The flares were easy to set up and ignite, like metal fireworks.

I stood in the line and looked out at the desert.

Terror, dread, horror exploded within the small, frightened animal of prey I truly was. Shuddering, I watched hunched, four-limbed figures burst out of the earth, howling with pain as though in rage that their bodies had been asleep and numb. The creatures were at least thirty feet high. Tentacles burst out of the top of their head. Four hands with claws the length of my sword reached for the sky. Some kind of hellish phosphorescence made their eyes blaze like excrement filled with blood. Their shaggy fur barely contained snake heads that jumped out, rattling and hissing and snapping at the air. Their four legs were articulated so they could walk, kneel, stand, or strike at incredible speed and at will.

And this was all in outline. The details were going to be considerably less attractive.

I could barely breathe. It’s easy to say that one won’t be afraid, but fear is older than our ability to say something. It was all I could do to hold the line, instead of run screaming into the night. This, I could do, if my invisible friend helped me. “Now!”

Extremely powerful directional klieg lights and truck headlights switched on at once, illuminating the front file of the monsters. I nearly passed out. Their brains were piled exposed at the top of their head. Their eyes were set asymmetrically just above their legs, and a single mouth, hideously mock-sexual and revealing gigantic teeth, stretched from the top of their heads to the place between their legs where normal creatures have genitals. There, another, smaller eye was placed, its pupil whipping around.

I smiled to myself and closed my eyes and prayed that I could still transform, not just for the power but also because it’s so enjoyable. I opened my eyes to find something that might turn into a sword if that’s what was needed here, and picked up a short piece of pipe someone had left lying on the ground.

Goddess Madoka, bless me, I prayed silently. Demon Homura, don’t give me any kind of trouble, you cosplaying bitch. I was suddenly filled with a deep, almost overpowering affection that brought tears to my eyes. I love you with all my heart like I a sibling I can’t stand, Homura. Bless your sweet soul and take care of Madoka.

I leapt and the air around me opened in a vortex of transformation. The familiar rush of energy flooded my body and concentrated in the front of my brain and the center of my heart. I laughed and transformed, thankful for at least this.

*

Not twenty feet away from the transforming Sayaka, a dead man lay stretched across the ground, relaxed as though he had chosen the position himself. The pain of his death had not erased a radiantly happy smile on his face.

The plasma transmission’s lettering was already fading in the temporal screen. But the message was clear to the right people, wherever they were. He loved the technology conferred to him. He had always wanted to use it, but had known well that it could only be used once, when life was leaving his body for good.

 

COMMUNIQUE

 

TO: COUNCIL BETWEEN WORLDS

FROM: DAVID SORMAN, SPECIES NEGOTIATOR CLASS II

REGARDING: PREPARATION FOR ASSAULT ON EARTH ABOMINATIONS PREVIOUSLY DISCUSSED

CONSIDERATION: A MOMENTARY DELAY IN THE ASSAULT DUE TO LIKELIHOOD OF EFFECTIVE RESISTANCE FROM OTHER AGENTS PRIOR TO ASSAULT

Dear Jou-Ar

I am honored to address you and the Council in my final moments, trusting in your wisdom to optimize the chances of limiting collateral damage on Earth during our attack on the abominations.

As some humans say, this is it. The child I have told you about, not knowing who or what I was, requested that I provide her with incendiary and illuminative devices, set up in a particular configuration, to be triggered at a certain point when the abominations emerge.

In my years of service for the Council, I have never used the teleportation credits conferred to my central brain lobes at sublation. I have saved them for exactly this kind of moment, knowing that using all of them at once would kill me within minutes.

But I cannot let the child warrior rush into this unassisted.

So I did as she asked, breaking myself by switching on the lamps of all the devices. And I did one other thing, the propriety of which you left to my discretion. Using a remote placement device, I injected Article Q into her. It should have migrated into her brain moments ago. Said item, as you know, can kill the host, but it is worth the risk.

I am honored to live and die for the Council, for humanity, for all benign sentience in the universe, and for the bright and glorious child fighting on her own right now.

Best wishes,

David Sorman

*

The Council could not change its plans, but the transmission from Sorman spread grief throughout its representatives across 100+ galaxies.

Racing ahead of the starships with the antimatter cannons, a giant pulse was on its way to substantiate the proximity of the target.

*

Sayaka had guessed correctly. The extremely bright line of lights repelled rather than drew the abominations. It hurt their hideous eyes, so they reflexively averted their sight from it and moved parallel to it, out to open desert. This would not matter for long, but it bought some time.

The joy of courage that had gotten her into terrible trouble countless times filled her again. She ran in huge leaps to the rear formation of the monsters and, using pure guesswork, struck each of them in turn before the group could turn around. The big eyes were like the side lamps on cars. Not designed to be frontally attacked, the creatures’ real eye was the one where genitals tended to be in living creatures, and for every eye there had to be a nerve leading to a brain, no matter what kind of being it was.

Or so she hoped.

So Sayaka ran and leapt rapidly behind the main group of three-storey monsters, ramming her sword hilt-deep in the small lower eyes. It worked perfectly at first. Ten of them toppled like rotten trees as she left them dying.

The damned snapping snakes were scary, but oddly enough, she didn’t consider them to be a problem.

She knew what was coming, but hadn’t wanted to think about it. It was inevitable.

This was a horde of monsters, an organized gang. Something pointed it in a direction and told it to move. But there had to be a telepathic link to make the horde move in a particular direction and some kind of primordial group decision to do it. Killing ten of them would raise some flags.

The others turned around as she left her last victim lying in the dust, coughing up brass-colored blood. She ran away, fast, leaping when it could take her further.

The spew of acid almost got her, only dissolving her cape on contact. She looked back enough to see the monsters projectile vomiting acid at her. Holy hell, she thought. Just keep running.

“Sayaka-chan! Sayaka-chan!”

Damn it, Madoka, not again. Another jump scare would kill her.

“Madoka, don’t do that to me! Where are you?”

“Just beyond the light barrier, Sayaka-chan. You are heading in exactly the right direction. Get here fast. We have gotten word that there is a fleet of attack ships from a galactic stakeholder coming to attack the abominations without caring who else they kill. We have to get out of here.”

I ran like hell. The spews were not any further away. I felt them brush the air just inches from my body. Finally, though, I leapt over the light line and the flying acid began gnawing at the line I put behind me. There were Madoka and Homura, on the ground, waiting for me.

I reached them and Madoka embraced me. “Homura-chan and I are going to destroy the creatures and then we are all escaping in case the attackers don’t know the monsters are gone. So hang close to us.”

It was good to see both of them, more than good. I was like a lost child feeling the sudden warmth of a parent’s hand. Then, of course, what we later decided was a pre-assault pulse blasted the earth and swept through our bodies. All of us hit the ground like marionettes with cut strings.

Horribly, Madoka and Homura were down for the count. I knew what I had to do.

I had to die.

I crawled a few feet to them and collapsed between them and took their near hands in mine. As I raised myself up, I began to weep like a frightened child. Kyouko. Kyouko. Oh my God, Kyouko. We had talked of death, had pledged to hold each other’s hands when either or both of us crossed over. My love, my love, my own only love. I love you, I love you, I love you my love, I shouted to her silently, praying that the message would reach her far across time and space. 

Then I closed my eyes to do what I needed to do.

Using every ounce of concentration and purpose I had stored away in my long short life, I started pulling energy out of my own body, visualizing a suction device within my hands pulling it all out. Mitochondrial, metabolic, catabolic, stored energy, all of it poured into and out of my hands, into Homura’s and Madoka’s. Inside of me, the lights of my life were going out. I don’t want to die, I thought, oh God I’m leaving Kyouko alone. I love her, I love her, how can I leave her alone.

Finally, not quite unconscious, my hands went slack and I pitched forward on my face.

What happened afterward was actually predictable. The charged up deities went to work that lasted maybe twenty seconds. I saw Homura’s face as sneering, she raised her hand at the sky and slowly rotated her wrist. In her line of sight, a magnificent storm sprang up and impossible clusters of chain lightning shot back and forth and crisscrossed 180 degrees, igniting directly above us.

“These are OUR enemies,” she shouted. “You have no right to them. They are OURS. I’m stopping the firestorm a short distance from your ships right now, but if you do not back off immediately I will vaporize your ships. The enemies are OURS.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Madoka ascending like a smiling pink cloud, gracefully and leisurely, taking out her bow. She trained the bow on the monsters.

“Poor creatures,” Madoka said, “poor creatures. Your souls, your lives have been hell, your hopes have been for mere sorrow. Rest, rest your heads on dying, rest your sad souls in the gentle ashes of Time.”

She fired her arrow.

I didn’t see it, but I knew what had happened. It was inevitable. But the nerves connecting my eyes to my brain were failing and my eyes were dimming. It was death, death come for me at last.

When Madoka knelt behind me, I had enough left in me to say, “I’m gone. I’m sorry.”

Right before I blacked out, I thought I heard her say, “No, you won’t die, Sayaka-chan. Not today nor tomorrow. You had a friend here. Rest.”

Then, I was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s odd to tell someone about how one thinks, when one is already dead.

Words are irrelevant. One “thinks” with what is left of vision and memory and sense, not with letters and signs. Forming words is not worth the mitochondrial fuel keeping the last cells living. 

The dying fade can be a wash of soft light and a sense of happiness that the misery of being alive is over. This is what I felt when Kyouko freed me from the monster I had become as Octavia, by giving up her own good life because she loved me. I actually reached for her hand before crossing over and will always believe that she took it as we both died. 

Or it can be a descent into terrible regret for the last moment, a sense of life cheapened and wasted.

But talking about actually being dead, about what one THINKS while actually being dead… That is hard.

I’ve died several times, so it’s worth trying to describe what one thinks when dead. Dying several times is nothing to brag about. One more time will do the trick for me. But like other experiences, it brings a certain amount of knowledge.

This time, I was a piece of rotten meat impaled on a fork, looking out on a world of old ash piles and unbanked burning coals. I was worn out after giving my body’s energy to Homura and Madoka for them to do what they had to do. What I “thought” was that it was strange any coals were still burning, that any light greeted the eyes of a piece of dessicated speared meat. What I “thought” was that it was an awful joke for me to be dead and still see these things.

And then it happened.

In blazing photographic clarity as fiery as her soul, Kyouko appeared to me, in her usual tee shirt and cut-off jeans, hair down, grinning. She cocked her thumb to her side. There was Madoka’s little brother, sitting in his high chair eating. He laughed at me and threw a handful of steamed edamame pods into my face.

I was about to try to say something when my body shook as though it had been hit by a truck. I started to breathe, and I opened my eyes.

*

FIRST STOP

*

Light, bright light, and insane pain.

I screamed in bewilderment and anguish. Thousands of power drills were boring holes into every part of my body.

“What…” I said. “It hurts!”

A cool palm touched my forehead and the pain stopped.

“You’re alive,” a soft sweet voice said. “It hurts to be alive.”

At one time, I would have had a comeback, but my brain was just coming online and the phrase just dissolved.

Another kind of agony announced itself, presenting its calling card, and an entirely different kind of pain scoured my skin and battered my organs.

“Oh my God!” I screamed. “Kill me!”

“No,” the voice said. “That is something we will not do.”

The palm touched my forehead again and the pain went away. Then the next pain came, the next comfort, and so on. By that time, I knew what was happening, having possessed healing magic at one time. They were basically flushing out the inventory of pain in me, both evident and suppressed, cleaning out closets and pantries and freezers.

This process repeated for centuries or five minutes. At last the gamut of agonies faded out and I lay panting and covered with sweat but cool and clear-minded. Around me were a group of magical girls. It was easy to tell that’s what they were. The looks of relieved sweetness and bravery, at heaven having saved them forever, were signature. They were all happy, wearing various sorts of clothes or no clothes at all. It didn’t matter here, in the Law of Cycles.

Inara, the chief healer, came to me smiling and took my hand. “Welcome back, Sayaka. I’m so happy to see you. It has been so long.”

I sat up, looking into her large beautiful eyes, and began to sob helplessly. Several of the girls gathered and embraced me as I cried. I was home. Or one of my homes. I couldn’t be in both homes at once.

Suddenly a loud, angry voice bellowed out a few feet from me. “What am I wearing? Where are my clothes?” 

I looked around my comforters and saw Homura sitting nearly nude in a gauzy robe, a demon fallen into soft beauty. Her gorgeous supple body contrasted comically with her goofy distorted face.

Inara called over. “We are washing them.”

Homura was taken aback. She didn’t know what to say. Then she said it anyway. “But those are demon clothes.”

Inara shrugged. “Why shouldn’t a demon wear clean clothes?”

Homura buried her face in her hands. I managed not to laugh.

Inara called out. “Goddess, are you awake?”

Madoka, unsurprisingly, was in Homura’s bed. She had just come to consciousness and was dressed in the same kind of negligee as the rest of us wore.

“Homura-chan,” she said. “What’s wrong?” She leaned over and embraced her wife from behind, gently encircling her shoulders and pulling her against her breasts and kissing the nape of her neck.

Homura was pathetic. She turned to mush as soon as Madoka said her name, and when Madoka embraced her, basically ceased to exist except as something like drifting happy smoke.

I felt a sudden stab of pain in my chest, thinking of Kyouko waiting for me and of my waiting for her. I didn’t want to leave this place, but I couldn’t stay. Whatever happened from here on in, Kyouko was the only place I wanted to be.

Anara gave each of us a glass of nectar, and we guzzled it down. Galaxies appeared in our minds and angels sang strange songs. When I thought about it, though, I had had enough galaxies and angels to last for quite a while. All I wanted was Kyouko.

“Well,” Madoka announced in a voice of absolute authority, “it’s time for Council.”

Homura’s face turned ashen.

Madoka looked down at her in a quiet mischief. “Attendance is required, especially for the troublemakers in question.”

I laughed, but only because I wasn’t one of the troublemakers.

*

“Council” is a polite term for “Trial.” But the logic of judgement in the Law of Cycles is peculiar. Homura had tried to split Madoka’s soul into two identical and self-sufficient parts, an application of math based solely on wishful thinking, leaving Madoka a goddess in the Law of Cycles and also a persona interface for the Goddess encased in the Homura-verse. But it didn’t work. Madoka simply spanned the distance and neutralized the barrier.

Since Homura had failed, she was judged Not Guilty. If her crime never occurred, what would she be guilty of? And of course, there was a prejudicial element in that the Goddess asked the court for leniency.

Homura looked profoundly disappointed with the judgement; she clearly wanted to suffer for her crimes. Okay, I thought, you’ll suffer. Just wait until we get back. I care about your happiness. 

As I looked at her, I began to wonder whether Homura wasn’t a masochist posing as a dominatrix in that hot black-winged goth outfit. She finally won Madoka as her lover, only to acquire the habit of submitting to Madoka’s demands before Madoka had a chance to issue them. I guess it was a relief not to have to carry the terrible load of demonic authority, anymore. 

No, it wasn’t masochism. It was simply that she felt that submission without being commanded can be an ethereal pleasure, if you have a mistress who doesn’t have an atom of real cruelty in her. 

Homura doesn’t answer to a sadist. She just likes to submit.

*

FINAL STOP

*

I have no room to criticize dominance and submission. 

When we got back to the Homura-verse, and I went home to Kyouko, she lost her mind after we spent a long time being lovey. To my silent surprise, she trussed me up. She was so weird that I didn’t ask what she was doing. I could tell that she was having a late reaction to fear and worry. All that first day she only untrussed me when I needed to go to the bathroom or eat something. 

Otherwise, she literally carried me around tied up because, she said, she was not giving me a chance to leave. Her craziness was loving and it would go away. By the next day, when I would brief and debrief with the others, she had stopped doing it and was in fact ashamed. I told her not to be, that I had traumatized her by going away.

What worried me was that I kind of liked being tied up.

When Madoka, Homura, Mami, Nagise, Kyouko and I met in our living room the second day, we were all a bit nervous with each other. I don’t know why, but I think it wasn’t just Kyouko and I who had the kinks come out into the open. 

Everyone was shifty-eyed, even Mami, who was looking more pissed off with each day of being pregnant. I didn’t blame her. Being committed to having eight kids because your friends were screwing up a cosmic storm justifies a little rage. A lot of rage. 

Maybe it’s just that there was so much weirdness and bitterness and sheer peculiarity in the air, with chaos rupturing the bubble, that the aphrodisiac wash from Madoka’s and Homura’s good times took…unusual forms. 

I’m going to stop talking about that. I can say that it had a lasting effect on my life.

“So,” Mami said, eyes filled with killer intent, “what did you do, Homura? What is all this? Did you rewrite the universe or not? And if not, why are we here?”

Homura looked off into the distance. “I think what I did was extended the range of the rewrite just as far as I wanted, and not even there. I made sure to get the Kyubeys, as that was my fondest wish, but after capturing everyone in the bubble and realizing that I would still be in conflict with all of you, I was so depressed that I didn’t bother organizing the chaos in the part of the universe I rewrote. Do you see what I mean? I went to the Kyubey planet and got the Kyubeys. I did a holographic capture, as Sayaka here calls it, of life on Earth and projected it into my own space. But all it turned out to be was a bubble, because truth be told, none of it mattered if I didn’t have Madoka. When I realized that all of you, and Madoka in particular, would be my enemies after I thought I dropped you into permanent safety, I became really depressed. 

“Sayaka saved all of our lives by showing me what the wraiths were and how to get rid of them. We found out on this trip that some aliens helped me materialize my rage at this one,” she looked at Madoka, “for making me kill her and start cycling through the timelines watching everyone die over and over again. When the wraiths were gone and my heart lifted, and I made up with Madoka, and things got to normal between Sayaka and me and we returned to being annoyed and pissed off with each other all the time, things got better.

“But I’ll tell you the truth, I was more afraid of chaos than I was of clarity, even after things got better. So I allowed absolute chaos — the mess I left behind me when was doing things or trying not to do things — to build up outside and encroach on the bubble.

“Meanwhile, to my surprise and eventual happiness, you all learned how to use the transforms I had built into the bubble and build this sub-world we’re in, where you don’t have to pretend you’re in middle school all the time but where you can go home to your copied parents after living your real lives here. It made me happy, really, so I helped as best I could. 

“But I was depressed and lonely, so chaos built up outside the bubble and when the same civilization that helped me create the wraiths also delivered Sayaka to Earth to fight monsters who they were responsible for awakening, Sayaka was sucked out of the bubble. Kyouko went mad with worry. But I finally had to release Madoka from the spell binding I put on her in this space. Outside the bubble, in the Law of Cycles, the binding didn’t apply. Here, I had to lift it. So I lifted it, since only with her help could I get Sayaka back.”

Mami snarled “Also, it would pay off in bed.”

Homura wanted to roll her eyes, I could tell. But she also didn’t want Mami to slide a knife between her ribs, and she had to face the music.

“So that’s it,” she said. “The only thing I can say is that due to Madoka forgiving me and working with me as a goddess after the awful stuff I did to her, and watching Sayaka be an epic hero by fighting eldritch abominations on her own not knowing whether anyone would help, the chaos is clearing up. Outside of the bubble, there’s just space. But I think that due to this sub-world here, and in light of what Madoka and I did together, we all have transform powers of holographic capture. We can go where we want from here, even Earth. Nothing happened to Earth. Nothing much has changed anywhere.”

Homura looked down at the floor. “Or more accurately, you can go where you want. Because it doesn’t matter where I go, I’m in a labyrinth. There’s no shaking it. And after you came to rescue me from it and I betrayed you by becoming a demon and locked you up here, I had to face the fact that you were not able to do anything to release me from the labyrinth. There’s no way out. Madoka is my wife, but she’s visiting or living with me in jail when she is here. I’m so lucky to have her that I think I could die.

“If I don’t live here, I’m not sure I can live anywhere.”

Mami was getting more and more worked up. “So let me get this straight. This whole mess, this whole world, is literally a construct of your paranoia? And this recent nightmare was the result of your being depressed?”

Homura buried her face in her hands.

“Oh well,” Mami said. “I’m pregnant and that’s all there is to it.” She rubbed her belly. “I’m sure a few of these will turn out okay. And it will keep Kyouske honest.”

Madoka smiled as she absent-mindedly petted Homura’s head, playing with her hair. Homura pretended not to notice it.

“Okay,” Madoka said, “I think we’re at a good starting point for going on from here. But there is one more very important thing we have to do. We have to allow Sayaka-chan the chance to come up with a penalty against Homura-chan, for sending her into a dimensional rift and putting her up against a terrifying gang of primordial monsters.”

Homura turned pale. “The worst punishment I could possibly have is knowing I am at Sayaka’s mercy.”

I smiled. “Homura, when we first got here and you were in depressed hell bitch mode and I was challenging you saying I would fight you eventually, do you remember that?”

“I could not possibly forget.”

“And you remember our long conversation about the wraiths and my helping you get rid of them?”

“Of course I remember that. I’m very grateful.”

“And do you remember the way we worked together on the trip to Earth, how you and Madoka and I gave of ourselves to make things happen?”

Homura was becoming nervous.

It was time. My revenge was nigh. Homura’s worst nightmare was seconds away.

I rushed over to her and embraced her. “Your penalty is that I will hug and kiss you every day!”

Horror filled her face, even as she knew she was bound not to fight me off. On top of that, Madoka had fallen on the floor laughing.

“I’m going to hug and kiss you every day, as much as I want to!” I said, and started kissing her face repeatedly and squeezing her.

“I’m in hell!” she screamed. “I’d rather die!”

Despite knowing that she was not supposed to, she disengaged and jumped to her feet. Everyone in the room was literally weeping with laughter. Madoka was dragging herself across the floor toward Homura, hyperventilating and convulsively laughing.

“Find another penalty!” Homura yelled, and fled out the door.

She was halfway down the street when I stepped outside.

“Come back,” I yelled, “I want to hug and kiss you because I love you!”

“Gah!” she shouted as she ran.

“Come back, I love you!” I yelled, running after her in the street, arms outstretched. 

*

This marks the end of “Sayaka and Homura in the Homura-verse”.


End file.
